All in

Chapter 2

Catherine's POV

Jason Smith bit his bottom lip when he read.

We'd gone over the basic concepts of economics (if I was going to tutor him, we were starting from the bottom up), and I was surprised at how much he already knew. I wasn't expecting that. But then I'm not exactly sure what it was I had expected.

Everyone knew about the accident. That his best friend Alex had gotten behind the wheel of Jason's car, either high or drunk (I had never been sure of which, and for all I know, it could have been both). He'd crashed the car, and Jason ended up in a coma for months. I guess I just thought he would be somehow less than what he had been before. So far he seemed pretty much the same to me.

I settled into a chair across from him and tried to concentrate on the book I had brought along, but I found myself peeping over the top of it and looking at his mouth. At the way he worried his bottom lip with his teeth.

It was kind of adorable, something my little brother did, and totally not in keeping with Jason's bad boy persona.

His eyebrows were furrowed as he concentrated, and he kept tugging at a piece of hair that hung in his eyes. His plain black t-shirt showed off impressive biceps, and though I couldn't see them, I knew that his faded jeans, so worn out the looked like they were about to fall apart, hung low on his hips. It was hot but he wore heavy black boots, and I noticed a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

He sure didn't look like someone who had nearly died in a car accident a year ago. In fact, with the beam of the sun coming in through the bank of windows highlighting the dark blue streaks in his hair, he looked more alive than anyone I knew.

But then again, hadn't he always?

Jason Smith. The bad boy with the face of an angel. The kid of boy who got away with almost everything because he was a charmer. Had that down to an art form by the sixth grade. In eight grade he convinced our teacher, Miss Melody, to let us have our year end dance out at Cook's Creek. You know, because that was so much cooler than the gym. Everyone was excited at the idea, and Trevor went with it.

He thought that maybe his band should play.

Oh and maybe his band should, you know, get paid to play.

And he managed to get Miss Melody on board with that.

When they changed the location, my parents wouldn't allow me go unless they chaperoned. As if. Who wants to go to their eight grade dance with their parents watching? Not me. I missed the dance in protest, and of course it was all everyone talked about that summer.

I totally blamed Jason and decided at that moment that he was on my very own personal blacklist. It was easy to do. The guy was confident, cocky even, and usually in the middle of whatever was going on.

And he always had a girl...or two. I thought of his ex and the guy we had seen her with earlier, and I wondered about that. I'd heard she dumped him a couple of months after he'd come out of his coma because he wasn't the same guy as he was before the accident.

If it was true, then she was as shallow as I'd always thought.

I snuck a peek at him. He looked good as new to me.

Not that I'd seen him much over the last year. Because of the accident, he had missed the entire first semester of school, and when he returned, well, we didn't exactly sit a the same lunch table. He hung with Alex Hawthorne, his buddy Noah, and more girls than I'd ever care to wade through.

My eyes fell back to Jason's mouth, and I thought of a dark closet, the smell of Pine-Sol, and his infectious grin. Jason Smith was trouble, and if I let him, he would make trouble for a girl like me. The guy was way out of my league.